Throwback Thursday: An Office Tower is Born

Bay Street is to Canada what Wall Street is to the United States, a catch-all term to describe not just an area but to finance in general. Like Wall Street in New York, Bay Street is home to some of the nation's most valuable real-estate as well as countless high profile corporations, legal firms and other businesses. The first phase of the Bay Adelaide Centre was a long time coming in Toronto's Financial District, and after a few stillborn attempts of the project getting going—remember the concrete stump we were embarrassed by for a decade?—we finally got to see major action on-site in 2006. The project kicked off with the excavation of the underground garage built on-site for the previous never-realized office tower.

Bay Adelaide Centre West excavation circa 2006, image by Edward Skira

Standing in the same spot several years later positions us in front of the lobby for the now-finished 51-storey office building. To the immediate east, phase two of the project is now under construction and well on its way towards its final height of 44 storeys.

The lobby of the Bay Adelaide Centre West, April 2014, image by Jack Landau

We will return next week with another look at the changing face of Toronto!